Interaction In Online Courses Research Articles

Investigation of distance education students' opinions on distance education, their expectations on student-student interaction in distance education and their perceptions regarding the community feeling

Distance education offers opportunities for widespread and continuous learning, granting access to information without limitations of time or location. Despite its numerous advantages, the absence of social interaction stands out as a primary obstacle in online learning, as these interactions can play a pivotal role in mitigating students' feelings of isolation and disconnection. Current trends in higher education seek to support students not only in meeting their academic requirements but also in addressing their emotional and mental well-being. This study aims to investigate the perspectives of associate degree students engaged in distance education on various aspects of this mode of learning, their expectations regarding interaction with fellow students, and their perceptions of the community feeling. To conduct this study, a cross-sectional survey method was utilized, involving 102 associate degree students enrolled in distance education programs. The findings of this study suggest that students express a reasonable level of satisfaction with distance education. Students enrolled in distance education courses express a desire to engage with their peers while pursuing online courses. While students may experience some sense of community in the realm of distance education, this sense may not reach a fully satisfactory level. Both the sense of community in distance education and student-student interaction in online courses have a significant and positive impact on students' overall perceptions of distance education.

Exploring Middles School Students’ Perceptions of Factors Affecting Teacher-student Interactions in Online Courses during Covid-19 in China

The purpose of this study was to express middle school student's' perceptions of the factors that influence online teacher-student interaction (TSI). We used a qualitative case study design in an effort to offer an in-depth description of the factors that students perceive as influencing TSI. Participants (N=12) were from 5 middle schools in Nanning, Guangxi, China. Information was collected with extensive semi-structured interviews and analyzed using a five-step method in mental research. Data analysis revealed three general themes about teachers' perceptions, including several components. We found that teachers' effective classroom skills, such as emotion-based information exchange, teachers’ interactive initiatives, and giving students praise and encouragement, were identified as dominant factors influencing the quality of TSI. In addition, teachers discussed effective environmental factors, as well as attributes and behaviors of participants as influencers of TSI, to understand their perceived dimensions of TSI. The results of this study can be used in teacher education programs to develop positive interventions to enhance educators' understanding of factors associated with TSI.

Nature of Feedback and Interaction in Online Courses during COVID-19

Feedback and interaction are essential parts of the learning process. No effective teaching and learning can take place without proper interaction and effective feedback. This study investigates the nature of feedback and interaction in online courses during COVID-19 during the academic year 2020/2021. The researchers employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods to achieve the purpose of this study. The study sample consisted of 115 students who are majored in the English language at Hebron University Moreover, four instructors were interviewed regarding the nature of interaction and feedback during COVID-19. The analyzed inputs of the questionnaire have shown that most of the students did not practice E-learning before, and they have internet connection in their home. Furthermore, most of the students agreed that face-to-face classes are better and more valuable especially in terms of interaction, online learning is considered as an effective way to maintain the communication during the pandemic and the nature of feedback given from instructors affect students’ interaction. Moreover, instructors can motivate students to interact with them and with other students during online sessions. It is important to mention that online assessment is criterion that instructors need to take into consideration. In addition to students' attitudes towards online interaction and feedback, teachers during interviews expressed their preference to face to face learning, and they think that interaction and feedback during online sessions are different and less fruitful than face-to-face teaching. At the end of this study, the researchers suggested some recommendations that may be achieved to improve the nature of interaction and feedback during the current situation.

Lecturers’ perspectives on interaction in online courses

This study aims to investigate lecturers’ perspectives on online interaction. Qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 9 lecturers at a public university in Hanoi. The findings show that online interaction can either be verbal or written and that direct feedback from learners has significant impact on the lecturers’ affect and motivation. The research results also reveal two main ways for improving online interaction, which are to examine non-verbal communication and to use flipped classroom models. On that basis, recommendations for designing future online courses are put forward.

The Importance of Interactions in Online Instruction: Part 3: Learner–Learner

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, educators grapple with the challenges of creating meaningful content in online courses in higher education. Specifically, designing an online curriculum that increases student motivation, student engagement, and student learning. Learner–Learner (LL) interactions are a key component in not only face-to-face learning, but also online learning. The purpose of this article to share the importance of LL interaction via best practices, examples, and applications in the context of online sexuality education for P–12. However, these ideas for integration of LL interaction best practices and strategies are suitable and can be adjusted for a wide variety of online courses, across all grade levels. The authors share three core practice principles that focus on nurturing LL interactions in online courses: 1) Netiquette expectations, 2) Students’ independent channels of communications, and 3) Content-specific peer feedback.

Lecturers’ perspectives on interaction in online courses

This study aims to investigate lecturers’ perspectives on online interaction. Qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 9 lecturers at a public university in Hanoi. The findings show that online interaction can either be verbal or written and that direct feedback from learners has significant impact on the lecturers’ affect and motivation. The research results also reveal two main ways for improving online interaction, which are to examine non-verbal communication and to use flipped classroom models. On that basis, recommendations for designing future online courses are put forward.

Design and Application of Automatic Feedback Scaffolding in Forums to Promote Learning

Forums are essential components facilitating interactions in online courses. However, in large-scale courses, many posts generated, which results in learners’ difficulties. First, the posts are poorly organized and some deviate from the topic, making it difficult for learners’ knowledge acquisition. Second, learners cannot receive timely feedback and guidance, making the learning progress unclear for them. Well-designed scaffoldings should be built based on challenges of forums to improve learners’ learning outcomes, knowledge construction, and completion rate. While targeting the problems in online forums, this article proposed principles for the design of online scaffolding after analyzing the requirements of online learning scaffolding or scripts. Subsequently, in this article, we designed an automatic feedback scaffolding based on the principles and a knowledge construction model. The scaffolding provided learners with timely feedback and related learning guidance. Tags were used to assist learners in acquiring relevant information more easily. The scaffolding was then integrated into the Learning Cell Knowledge Community and used in an online course for 955 learners. The results showed that automatic feedback scaffolding positively affected learners’ learning and promoted positive knowledge transformation. Furthermore, we found that the scaffolding could help learners induce more constructive behaviors defined in the Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive deep learning framework that demonstrated the reason for learners’ knowledge transformation. At last, learners’ course completion rate also increased with the help of the scaffolding, which provided evidence that well-designed scaffolding can result in positive educational outcomes. In addition, the principles proposed could also contribute to further scaffolding design and practices.

A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Online Instructional Strategies Optimized With Smart Interactive Tools Versus Traditional Teaching for Postgraduate Students.

To solve the problem that lack of interaction in online courses affects motivation and effectiveness of students’ learning, smart interactive tools were introduced into the online Neurobiology course. This study aimed to evaluate the students’ satisfaction with online teaching mode and assess the academically higher and lower performing students’ learning effectiveness in the online course optimized with smart interactive tools compared to face-to-face learning. Descriptive statistics and independent t-tests were used to describe student samples and determine the differences in students’ satisfaction and performance. Reflections of students’ satisfaction revealed that about 65.8% were satisfied with the learning involvement and about 60.5% were satisfied with the class interaction. Almost two-thirds of the class agreed that the smart interactive tools applied in the online course could help them attain their learning goals better. Among all the smart interactive functions, the class quiz was the most effective one in helping students grasp the main points of the course. No significant differences were found between the two teaching modes in the overall and academically higher or lower performing students’ final exam average scores. Compared to each band score of such two teaching modes, no one failed to pass the final exam in the online course, however, three lower-performing students who were taught in the traditional course failed. This study suggested that optimized online teaching with smart interactive tools could produce the same learning effectiveness for the academically lower-performing students as for the higher-performing students. Meanwhile, the instructors could know the learning status in which each student was and perform personalized guidance and improve exam passing rate accordingly.

Getting to Know You: Student-Faculty Interaction and Student Engagement in Online Courses

Covid-19 presented many challenges to universities as brick-and-mortar courses were moved to an online format. This work is an unofficial study of learner-instructor interaction and student engagement in two 7- week online graduate-level courses conducted in Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and early Spring 2021. Research shows that instructor presence in online courses leads to increased student engagement, as well as motivation, well-being, and academic achievement. Student engagement is shown to have a direct impact on a student’s emotional, behavioral, and cognitive successes. This work proposes that increased learner￾instructor interaction in online courses using strategies lead to greater student engagement with the course, and greater student success in overcoming barriers and challenges to online learning.

Expanding interaction in online courses: integrating critical humanizing pedagogy for learner success

Millions of college students in the U.S. are enrolled in online courses, with the global pandemic resulting in a “pivot to online” for educational and health reasons. African-American college students continue to face barriers to academic success, and this response to Kuo and Belland (in Educ Technol Res Dev 64(4):661–680, 2016) investigates how the concept of “learner interaction” supports success. Finally, this response includes examples from online courses informed by “critical humanizing pedagogy,” in which social interaction is a key driver of learning.

Re-Defining, Analyzing and Predicting Persistence Using Student Events in Online Learning

In education, several studies have tried to track student persistence (i.e., students’ ability to keep on working on the assigned tasks) using different definitions and self-reported data. However, self-reported metrics may be limited, and currently, online courses allow collecting many low-level events to analyze student behaviors based on logs and using learning analytics. These analyses can be used to provide personalized and adaptative feedback in Smart Learning Environments. In this line, this work proposes the analysis and measurement of two types of persistence based on students’ interactions in online courses: (1) local persistence (based on the attempts used to solve an exercise when the student answers it incorrectly), and (2) global persistence (based on overall course activity/completion). Results show that there are different students’ profiles based on local persistence, although medium local persistence stands out. Moreover, local persistence is highly affected by course context and it can vary throughout the course. Furthermore, local persistence does not necessarily relate to global persistence or engagement with videos, although it is related to students’ average grade. Finally, predictive analysis shows that local persistence is not a strong predictor of global persistence and performance, although it can add some value to the predictive models.

Student perceptions of required student-to-student interactions in online courses

Student perceptions of required student-to-student interactions in online courses

The effects of interaction types on learning outcomes in a blog-based interactive learning environment

ABSTRACT As the use of online learning has continued to expand, there has been a growing demand for advanced software or social sites that can enhance learning outcomes in online settings. It is important to explore how learner–learner, learner–teacher and learner–content interactions affect on learning outcomes while using the social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, Blogs, etc. Although some prior research highlight that there is a demand for interaction in online courses, specific design tactics and empirical evaluation of the effects of interaction on learning outcomes in blog-based courses are lacking. Thus, a blog learning platform named “Learner’s Digest Blog” (LDB) was developed to facilitate the three types of interactions and enhance learning outcomes. A total of 26 learners participated in the blog-based interactive learning environment. The study addressed two research questions, and regression analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings indicated a significant influence between learner–learner interaction, learner–teacher interaction and learner–content interaction on subjective learning outcome. In contrast, there was no significant influence of learner–teacher interaction on objective learning outcomes, but learner–learner and learner–content did significantly affect objective learning outcomes. A significant relationship was also found between students’ subjective and objective learning outcomes.

EXPLORING THE INTERACTION EQUATION: VALIDATING A RUBRIC TO ASSESS AND ENCOURAGE INTERACTION IN DISTANCE COURSES

The degree of interaction among participants in distance courses is widely acknowledged to be an indicator of successful learning experiences; interaction has been found to contribute to both achievement and student satisfaction. As an increasing number of distance courses move to a completely asynchronous, online format, providing for better interaction is an important means of assuring course quality. To allow measurement and study of interaction in online courses, five elements were identified that contribute to interaction, and a rubric was designed to assess the degree of each in distance courses [1]. A previous use of the rubric in one online class [1] indicated the instrument had good convergent and divergent validity and reliability in terms of consistency of results across students. The current study focused on establishing the rubric’s concurrent validity and consistency of results across four distance courses. Recommendations are made to increase the usefulness and reliability of the rubric in practice.

Using Augmented Reality to Increase Interaction in Online Courses

Augmented reality (AR) is technology that combines virtual reality with the real world in the form of live video imagery that is digitally enhanced with computer-generated graphics (Perdue, 2017). Augmented reality was used in a graduate level distance education course offered in the summer of 2017 to foster interaction. Students enrolled in the course had an opportunity to download and create augmented reality assignments to become familiar with the use of this technology as another tool to communicate and collaborate in online settings. Findings included primarily positive student attitudes regarding the use of AR in the online classroom.

Predicting student success by modeling student interaction in asynchronous online courses

Early-warning intervention for students at risk of failing their online courses is increasingly important for higher education institutions. Students who show high levels of engagement appear less likely to be at risk of failing, and how engaged a student is in their online experience can be characterized as factors contributing to their social presence. Social presence begins with teacher-student and student-student interaction in online courses. Fortunately, student interaction data can be gleaned from learning management systems, used to model and predict at-risk students at an early stage. This research addresses an existing model for predicting at-risk students to test a previous hypothesis that a holiday effect is a contributor for failure. A new analysis then presents an alternative approach, one that tests the frequency of student interaction rather than amount of interaction as a preferable indicator.

Online Instructors’ Use of Scaffolding Strategies to Promote Interactions: A Scale Development Study

<p class="3">A great deal of research has documented that interactions among students or between students and instructors are key to student success in an online learning setting. However, very little research has been statistically and systematically conducted to examine online instructors’ conscious and effortful use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions in online courses. The purpose of this research was to develop a scale assessing online instructors’ use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions. We employed a scale development method for the study. Exploratory factor analysis revealed one factor structure associated with instructors’ use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions in online settings. Confirmatory factor analysis conducted with a different group of online students indicated that the one-factor model fits the data well. In addition, significant correlations with social presence and classroom learning community scales further demonstrated convergent validity. The new scale of online instructors’ use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions demonstrated psychometrically sound validity and reliability.</p>

The ABC's of Online Course Design According to Addie Model

The purpose of this study was to design the course of Programming Languages-I online, which is given on face-to-face basis at undergraduate level. It is seen in literature that there is no detailed research on the preparation of a fully-online course directly based on an instructional design model. In this respect, depending on the ADDIE design model, the most popular instructional design models, an online course was adapted in phases. Each phase of the model and on the steps in each phase were explained. The preparation of this course given via DLP lasted approximately 500 hours. Following its preparation, the pilot application was carried out with the learners taking the course of Programming Languages during summer school period. The learners used DLP in all respects, and DLP was revised and the necessary changes were made in line with the learners' views and with the results of the usability test. The study revealed that it was important to analyze all the related areas in the analysis phase of an online course design and to make the necessary decisions in the phase of design. In the dimension of distance education evaluation, since there is no precise and reliable method, the traditional evaluation methods were favored within the scope of the product evaluation of this course taught via DLP. In addition, within the scope of the process evaluation, the learners' views were determined via weekly evaluations. Establishing interaction in online courses is important to prove the live structure of the system, and this situation will help learners perceive themselves to a part of the course.

Does a case-based online group project increase students’ satisfaction with interaction in online courses?

Due to the realistic, complex natures of authentic cases involved in case-based learning, the use of group work has been encouraged and expected to enhance the quality of interaction among participants and to improve students’ learning experiences. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the case-based online group work increased students’ satisfaction with interaction among students in an online course. Findings of this study revealed that the group assignment did not have an effect on students’ satisfaction with online interactions. Instead, students’ perceptions of the importance of group work were associated with their satisfaction with interaction in the online course.

Reflections on online learning designs and cross-institutional research collaborations: Revisiting “classrooms without walls” in two Australian universities

The article on which this paper reflects presented elements of a research project investigating learning interactions in online courses at two Australian universities. This paper revisits that earlier account of researching “classrooms without walls” by distilling and updating the authors’ propositions and by examining these propositions’ potential wider applicability. The twin foci of this examination relate to effective online learning designs and innovative cross-institutional research collaborations.